


foolish and joyful and sweet

by clayre



Series: picture it, soft [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Late Night Conversations, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25026469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clayre/pseuds/clayre
Summary: The Warden’s jaw was tight with something barely concealed, not unlike fury, and her body was taut like a bowstring, arrow nocked, and he suddenly felt like the archery boss in front of her. Her aim was as true now as it always was, and it cut him deeply when she said, “Of course you don’t. You want to hide from it, like you hide from all your responsibility.” He felt his mouth part in surprise, and he could see a flash of something in her eyes, like she knew she’d gone too far and she regretted it, but she closed off again a heartbeat later, brows furrowed low and her eyes alight with the look of a soldier about to deliver the killing blow ─ but in the end, she couldn’t look at him, and she focused her scrutiny on the fire. “One of us has to face it.”The Warden and Alistair discuss the aftermath of Morrigan's dark ritual, and the aftermath of becoming the Warden.
Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Alistair/Warden (Dragon Age)
Series: picture it, soft [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812277
Comments: 13
Kudos: 50





	foolish and joyful and sweet

**Author's Note:**

> ive ALWAYS wished we had an after-the-dark-ritual scene with a romanced alistair!! LOL i really just wrote this for me so i don't know if it'll be any fun to read, but i had a great time writing it!! i have like 5 more of these in the works (omg. help) so i'll be making them a part of a series, but none of them are particularly connected, canonical, or reliant on the other pieces i have going :0) i just think it's so fun to imagine the conversations the warden could have with their companions in between all the story quests!! (this series, at least, will be contained specifically to alistair/warden, however ♥) also, definitely not in chronological order! this was actually the last one i started, but i've got pieces from the very beginning of the game, after the game, etc!! so we'll be jumping around a lot... LOL
> 
> i also really enjoy the idea of morrigan and alistair sort of coming to a mutual respect for each other during/after the dark ritual 😢 i really like their dynamic, i think they're such a funny duo together!! but i also think they could come to understand each other, at least when it comes to their love for the warden!! maybe i'll write my version of the dark ritual one day.... LMAOOO

Alistair felt disquiet as he shouldered the door to his quarters open, the wood groaning under the force of his push; there was something sickeningly heavy in his stomach, and even though he’d bathed earlier that evening, he felt just a little . . . tainted. A fitting word, he supposed, and he tried not to let the nausea on his face show when he closed the door behind him, going about it noisily so that he might make his presence known to his betrothed. She stood in front of the fire with her hands clasped and resting on the small of her back in full plate, poised like the commander of Ferelden’s armies even when no one was there to witness it, still as stone and just as uncompromising.

And yet he’d abandoned his own armor, in his own quarters, after the ritual. He’d hastily dressed himself in disgust, as soon as the act was complete, in only his arming doublet, breeches, and marching boots. His plate lay haplessly on the sitting bench by the bed, and he’d focused his eyes on it during, noting all the bumps and scratches and dents. So battle-worn, so battered, and he felt as though he looked the same way; beat down and bruised. For all of Morrigan’s venom, however, the act itself had been as respectful as the two of them could bring themselves to be with each other, and it wasn’t _her_ that he was concerned with. It was the woman standing in front of him, and the knowledge he’d known another, with her blessing, at that. With her _insistence,_ even.

Now, in front of the Warden, he felt very underdressed and very small, and the juxtaposition between them made him helpless with anger, and bitterness, and hope, so sweet and urgent and pleading that he almost felt his eyes grow wet in the wake of it all. _Please, Maker, let this work._

It had been a long night, that was for certain; but he didn’t regret it. When Riordan had told them of the sacrifice there was to make, the Warden had, instantly, volunteered herself. So while the ritual with Morrigan may have felt . . . dirty, he tried to remind himself it was going to be worth it. He still felt almost sick with the tension of it, though, especially as the silence between himself and his bride-to-be stretched on ─ and she didn’t turn to face him, or greet him. His stomach sank as he stood there, shifting from foot to foot and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Well?” she asked, disturbing the uneasy silence. He watched her jut her chin out to look at him from the corner of her eye, and he couldn’t read the blue of it like he normally could. He swallowed, thickly, trying to conjure up an answer that wouldn’t hurt her or him, but she continued before he’d had enough time to think. “Who’s better in bed, then? Me, or her?”

“Don’t,” he bit out sharply.

She turned to face him fully, and tried as he might, he couldn't find a crack in her expression: unreadable, calm, icy. Alistair wished she’d lose her composure, just the once. He felt like a child throwing a tantrum in the face of her sangfroid. “I’m simply trying to lighten the mood.”

“It’s not funny.” He leaned against the door, heavy, and rubbed his forehead with his bare hand. “What do you want me to say? I found it _deeply_ unpleasant. It’s done.” He left his _I did it for you_ unsaid, but somehow he knew she could hear it anyway, and part of him relished in the way her fists clenched at her sides, the way she jerked her face away from him. He loved her still, no matter the price of it, and he said, a little more diplomatically, “Look, I don’t want to fight. Not now. We can talk about it later.”

He watched her study the bed, as though she was counting each individual thread that made up the blankets. “Is this a fight to you, Alistair?” she challenged, darkly, and Alistair’s hackles raised. “Let’s not be sensitive; it’s unbecoming. All I thought to invite was a conversation. We should speak of what’s to come ─ who’s to say there’s a later?”

“Don’t you dare patronize me.” He took a step towards her. “Morrigan’s to say,” he grit out, through clenched teeth, “hence the whole ─ the whole ─” He stammered, gesturing vaguely with both hands and then shaking them, imagining he was strangling Morrigan as he did. “The whole magical sex rite ritual thing ─ whatever! I don’t understand. Why ask me to do it if you don’t trust it to succeed?”

“I trust her,” the Warden said. “But I also trusted Arl Howe. You trusted Arl Eamon, as a little boy. We both lost our adolescence due to them.”

Alistair couldn’t help himself; he threw his hands up in the air, and he was sure he was looking at her in astonished outrage. _“Then why?_ If you think there’s a chance she’s betraying us, _why?_ I would have _gladly_ not gone through with that.” The bridge of his nose was solid under his thumb and forefinger as he pinched it, and the tension behind his eyes was so palpable that he almost swore he could feel it throbbing against the pads of his fingers. “I’m really not in the mood for this sort of talk, let alone from _you,_ of all people.”

The only indication of her discomfort, or perhaps anger, was a single twitch in her jaw, the muscle spasming in her effort to keep her face still and blank. “And what do you mean by _me,_ of all people?” she asked, but the way she’d phrased it sounded more like an accusation than a query. “Do you expect me to sit idle when we march to war at dawn? There are plans we have to make, Alistair. We need to know what to expect should . . . the worst occur.”

A little defensively, he held his hands up. “That’s not what I was saying, and you know it!” He made an irritated noise, somewhere between a scoff and a huff of air. “And I notice you didn’t answer my question. What happened to wanting a conversation, then? Go on. Have at it. You clearly have more to say. What _plans_ are you scheming up now? Let me guess: I have to fuck the Empress of Orlais.”

 _“Enough,”_ the Warden snapped, and the veneer of composure she often boasted finally seemed to be splintering. Her eyes were dark and smoldering, like burning coals embedded into the thinly-disguised ire of her face. “I don’t think she’s betraying us,” the Warden said, her endless patience seemingly running thin, “but all the trust and all the belief in the world won’t curb the inevitable, if it is meant to be. This was a desperate act by desperate people, not a guarantee. If Morrigan is wrong, we need to discuss what comes ─ after.” The trip of her words did not escape him, and he felt a strange throbbing all down his arms, like the heartbreak was so great that his chest couldn’t keep it there. “I want to believe that what’s been done tonight is enough, but we have no way of knowing until the battle.” Her shoulders were straight and strong, but he could hear the weariness in her voice, and if he looked close enough, he could almost make out where she stopped and _the Warden_ began ─ they were one and the same, but more and more these days, the latter seemed to be a character she slipped into. “If only will could make it so.”

She said it often. He’d asked her where she picked it up from, at one point, and she’d told him that her father had declared it as she and her mother tried to keep his guts in his stomach with their trembling hands, the mess firm and slippery and wet with blood. _It’s not true, you’re all right,_ she’d said; _if only will could make it so,_ he’d said back, his viscera spilling between her fingers and staining her childhood home like darkspawn taint coating the back of their throats.

Alistair softened, just a bit. “Then why not just hope? Why torture ourselves preparing for worst case scenarios? We’re as prepared as we can possibly be. We’re exhausted ─ we should just get some rest. I don’t want to think about what could happen, not now.”

The Warden’s jaw was tight with something barely concealed, not unlike fury, and her body was taut like a bowstring, arrow nocked, and he suddenly felt like the archery boss in front of her. Her aim was as true now as it always was, and it cut him deeply when she said, “Of course you don’t. You want to hide from it, like you hide from all your responsibility.” He felt his mouth part in surprise, and he could see a flash of something in her eyes, like she knew she’d gone too far and she regretted it, but she closed off again a heartbeat later, brows furrowed low and her eyes alight with the look of a soldier about to deliver the killing blow ─ but in the end, she couldn’t look at him, and she focused her scrutiny on the fire. “One of us has to face it.”

 _Hypocrite._ He wanted to be sympathetic, he did. He loved her fiercely, and he knew this was her way of despairing, but the words stung him all the same, moreso that they were coming from her. Bitterness crested like a wave in his throat, and he strode over to her in fast, heavy steps, wrenching her around by the shoulder to face him. The look of shock on her face and the way the vigor of it made her stumble and catch herself on the stone arch of the fireplace was darkly gratifying.

“You don’t get to be angry with me for this,” he told her, voice low and deep. “You don’t get to be angry now that I’ve had another woman, when _you_ asked me to do this. Say it again, but look me in the eye this time.”

“I’m not angry with you,” she said, almost comical in how waspish she sounded, “and certainly not because you’ve had another woman. I’m not a child.”

He laughed, humorlessly, and he’d paced to the wall opposite her, and back to her, then to the wall again. “Really? Because you could have fooled me, my dear! On both counts!”

The muscles in her throat worked as she swallowed, hard, and she was clearly trying to bolster her resolve, shut herself down again; it didn’t seem to be working. “I didn’t mean to ─ it’s not that I’m ─ Alistair. I asked this of you. I would not be upset with you for obliging me. If there’s even a small chance it could work, then it was necessary. We had no choice.” 

He stormed to her once more, brow furrowing as he seethed. “Then perhaps you ought to be kinder with your words, my love. I did this for _you,_ lest you’ve forgotten.”

“For _me?”_ The scoff she burst out with almost made him want to leave the room. “It saves both of us, lest _you’ve_ forgotten. Don’t act like a martyr when all you’ve done is have sex with a pretty woman.” 

He jerked his hands up, making as if to strangle her. _“What?”_ She looked away from him, and he ducked back into her line of sight furiously. “What is _wrong_ with you? Do you think I’m stupid? You really think I’m not aware of the lengths you would go to to keep me from making that final blow? You’d kill me yourself if it came down to it. I would never even get the chance to make that sacrifice. You wouldn’t give it to me.” She had the grace to look ashamed, and she couldn’t meet his eyes nor dispute him. “This was a desperate act, all right. But _I_ was the desperate one. It was Morrigan, or a life without you, and Maker knows why when you’re acting like this, but I chose you. I did it to save you. Don’t act like this was for us. It was for _you._ It certainly felt like I had no choice.”

The words felt like weights off his shoulders as they came out, and he’d planned to stop there, he really did, but the relief of finally giving voice to his frustration was too intoxicating to deny, and he continued, raw. “Just as I had no choice when _you_ gave me the crown. Maker, may I forgive you the way He forgives us all. You knew how much I didn’t want it. I’d spoken about it at length! But that evidently didn’t matter to you, because here I am, awaiting coronation! How in Andraste’s name did that happen, do you think? And why did I have no say in it, when it was _my_ service being pledged?” He paused, then answered his own question, “Ah. Because it wasn’t about my service at all, was it? No, it was about your service. You wanted the crown.” Alistair ran a hand through his hair, feeling world-weary suddenly. “Of course, you had no claim, not without me. It was all orchestrated, wasn’t it? You had me champion on your behalf, because you knew I wouldn’t spare Loghain. Anora would have sought vengeance on me and had me executed if she were to become queen. She said so herself; I granted her mercy where she would not have shown me the same. But that’s exactly what you wanted, wasn’t it? You forced it to be either me, or her.” He dropped his hand to his side. “Rather, _you_ and me, or her. You beautiful, clever, conniving thing. Is marriage a happy little byproduct, or just a union of convenience?”

The Warden seemed so pale, suddenly, even with the warm glow on the fire casting its light over her skin. He’d never seen her look so small; her light eyes were bright and wide, and the abject dread on her face made her look just as young as she really was. Hardly months over twenty, just like him. He was so used to seeing her poised and almost stoic, like a Qunari, hard-eyed and flat-mouthed and strong-shouldered. She never seemed to waver, ever, and she made choices with such resolution that Alistair had, at times, thought she was incapable of doubt. She always had the right answers, he’d thought, and she always had the right words to say, a woman with persuasion the likes of which Alistair had never met.

And yet she didn’t say anything, now. Not as she stood in front of him, brows drawn up in anguish and mouth a thin line. He waited, and waited, and the silence stretched on, only interrupted by the cracking of the fire.

“What about honor?” she finally breathed. “What about duty?”

His very own words, deflected back at him like the point of her blade, and they pierced him just as true. His face must have reflected her own mournful feelings, because she reached out to him. He drew away, sharply. “Don’t do this to me,” he pleaded, rough. “I love you, you know that, but I won’t marry for obligation. Blight take the throne. I don’t want honor or duty to come between us, but this was a duty that was . . . unnecessary. You didn’t give me a choice about it, and you should have. It wasn’t your name to give away.”

Her mouth quivered, just barely. “You want to make choices? Fine. You make choices. Give Anora the crown, then. Let the traitor’s daughter rule. You want Harrowmont on the throne in Orzammar? Let’s march back. We’ll be _true_ kingslayers when we usurp Bhelen. Maybe you resent that I destroyed the Anvil. Do you want to build an army of enslaved dwarves, is that it? Or do you think I should have let the werewolves tear the elves apart? Should we have ceded to your Templar wisdom, and let Greagoir slaughter all those innocents at Kinloch Hold? Perhaps Connor should have died? Or Isolde? Command me, and I’ll run Morrigan through with my sword, let you take the final strike with the archdemon, and watch you die for it.”

Alistair reared even further back from her. “This isn’t like you.” 

“What isn’t?” She threw her arms out to her sides, bidding him look at her and, for the first time that night, he realized he’d never been on this side of her; this was the only time he’d been subjected to the full brunt of those icy eyes she usually leveled on those who opposed her. He’d watched her turn that cutting focus onto anyone she deemed an enemy; it was the face she wore when she was _The Warden,_ when she played the part of the only thing standing between Ferelden and the brink, and the only thing standing between a man and her bloodthirsty blade. He decided, very readily, that he hated being on this side of it. He might have been intimidated, months ago when they were fumbling into each other and shy, but now he was just disappointed and hurt.“What isn’t like me? Making hard choices? Leading? Telling the truth? What part, exactly, is unlike me?”

“You’re acting like we’re adversaries,” he said, defensively. “You’re giving me _the Warden_ treatment.”

She burst out with an angry, _“I am the Warden!_ That’s who I _am,_ Alistair!”

“That’s who you hide behind!” he shouted back, sick of it. “I’m the one who hides from my responsibility? As I recall it, weren’t you the one saying, oh, no, don’t look at me, Alistair is the _real_ Grey Warden here? I would have done this,” he said, vehemently, and he gestured to the room around them, “with or without you, and Maker, am I glad it was _with_ you, but don’t you dare say I hide from my responsibility when you hide behind your title because you’re afraid you’ve made the wrong choices, and you’re so overcome with guilt that you can’t face it without pretending you’re above it all!” He neared her again, emphatically. “Don’t condescend to me. You think I’m not aware of the difficulty you’ve faced? I’ve faced it with you. I’ve supported you, I’ve fought on your behalf, on behalf of us all. And I wish I could shoulder some of the ache you must feel, but I _can’t,_ not when you won’t let me, because you’re ─ stubborn! The most stubborn woman I’ve ever met! If you would just ─ stop being her for a night, stop being the Warden, and let me help you. You were never just the Warden to me! Andraste’s flaming sword, you’re my _bride.”_

And just like that, the image was shattered. The breath in her chest left her in a rush, shaky and forced, like he’d struck her hard in a vulnerable spot in her sternum with the blunt end of his pommel and knocked it clean out of her. The shine to her eyes was unmistakably wet. Her mouth flattened thin, as though she were trying very hard to remain impassive, but he could see that his heat-of-the-moment speech had reached her. And he hadn’t even had to rehearse! Maybe he was cut out for this king thing, after all.

“You never used to hide from me,” he continued, fiercely. “Don’t you start now. Don’t you back out on me now.”

He let her have a moment to try and compose herself; she’d wrenched away from him, her hands on her hips and shoulders drawn up, turned to the fire so she wouldn’t have to face him. In the interim, Alistair drifted to the bed, then set himself down on it, heavy, and it creaked in protest under the full drop of his weight. Burying his face in his hands, he tried to rub the heat of anger out of his cheeks and he listened to the sounds of the fire snapping as it burned ─ and then the sounds of buckles being undone. When he pushed his hand away from his eyes and through his hair to investigate, he could see the Warden stripping herself of her armor, mechanical and stiff and barely controlled.

Alistair watched from where he was slumped, dejected, chin resting in his palm. Part of him thought he should have helped her ─ plate could be a complicated beast, and she was struggling with certain pieces, but he stayed where he was, suddenly too exhausted to even consider the scant trip to her side. She managed it on her own, the way he would have managed Ferelden on his own. When her armor laid in a mess on the floor, she at last stole to him, defeated and exhausted and shaky as she sank to her knees in front of him and buried her face in his thighs.

He kept his chin in one hand, but he stroked through her silky hair with the other, halfheartedly comforting her. She was impressively still and silent, but he could feel dampness on his breeches, and it gave her away. Her arm laid over his lap, keeping his thighs together, and her breathing was deep and slow, though hitched at times.

She turned her face by a breadth, if only so that he might hear her when she choked out, voice thick, “I’m so sorry, Alistair. I’m so sorry.” He tutted at her, easing his thumb down over the soft skin behind her ear, carding his fingers through her hair. “I know you hate her,” she was saying, “and I knew you wouldn’t want to, and I asked anyway, and I never would have let you make the sacrifice with the archdemon, so it was all for me, so that I might live, and I’m so sorry. Thinking of it makes me sick, because I knew you’d hate it, I knew you would, but I asked you to do it anyway.” She sucked in a breath, sharp. “I knew you didn’t want to be king, and I made you one anyway, and I’m so sorry.”

It was gratifying to hear. A little frantic, and certainly not the most eloquent apology, but it was a start. He pressed his hand down, cupping the back of her head and holding her face to him. “I know,” he said, truthfully.

She dragged her cheeks along his thigh as she shook her head, and he finally caught the barest tremble of her shoulders. “I was wrong,” she said, smothered against him, “when I said you hid from responsibility. I know you don’t. You never have. You’re a good man, Alistair. I thought you’d make a good king. It felt right to put you on the throne, because you care, so much, and you’re brilliant, even when you pretend not to be, and you’re one of the most skilled warriors I’ve ever met. You throw yourself into responsibility. If you were the Warden, you would have saved us all, and I thought a man like that should be king. It felt right. You’re such a good man, Alistair. I know you’d ─ you’d sacrifice everything, if you had to, I know that.”

Alistair worked his fingers down her nape, beneath the neckline of her doublet. “Everything but you.”

The noise that escaped her was so quiet he almost thought he imagined it, wounded and wet, and her breath shuddered out of her, hot against his thigh. “I’m unworthy. Of you, of this. Of being the Warden. I haven’t done enough. There must be something more. Please, Maker, let there be something more, and let me be worthy of it.” She pitched forward on her knees, just slightly, until she was prostrated over him like a woman knelt praying before an altar. Her hands were solid on his waist, keeping him right where he was ─ or simply to assure herself that he was there, warm and alive underneath her. “I can’t face Fergus, should he still live. I can’t. I couldn’t save his wife, or his child, nor his mother and father. How could he ever forgive me? And _you._ I made you king. I made you bed Morrigan. How could you ever forgive me? If Ferelden should fall, how could anyone?” Her hands were suddenly more insistent in how they gripped at him, hard, and she bit out, “Please, please, please let this be enough. If it all fails, if I fail, then I’ll have hurt you, for nothing. Then all those people I was too slow or too weak or too stupid to save will have died, for nothing. I can’t ─”

He recalled the Gauntlet, when she’d stripped to her skin and waded through fire with no hesitation, like Andraste had centuries ago; Alistair had held his breath when the heat licked at her hands, her thighs, and from behind, her shoulders broad and squared and powerful and proud, he thought she looked exactly like all the Chantry depictions of the Lady Redeemer. The look on her face when the Guardian had told her she was worthy, bathed in flame that didn’t burn her, was like she wanted to laugh, like she was offended, like she could have cried. He could so easily picture the grief in her eyes with perfect clarity, he could hear their conversation afterwards, when she, at last, spoke to him at length about Highever and what had transpired. She bore the tragedy like a personal failing, as though she was responsible for every lost life within her castle’s walls, and Alistair knew that she could endlessly devote herself to every single problem in Ferelden and still never feel like she was doing enough.

“Don’t be absurd,” he hushed, gently. “No one else could have done what you have. You’ve united the Dalish, the dwarves; all of Ferelden has come together under your banner, because of what you’ve done. I don’t pretend to know if we’ll succeed, but I believe we will. I really, really do. I believe in everything you’ve done, and I’ll stand behind it, no matter what happens. You did everything you could ─ and more. I mean that.” He laughed a little, and explained it with, “You know, the moment I knew I was in trouble was that damned lockbox. From the Wilds. You found that grieving wife in a country being battered from all sides, and you gave it to her, and ─ and I won’t ever forget the look on her face. You’ve done more than you could possibly know, for more people than you could possibly know. I swear, if I hadn’t seen it from time to time, if I hadn’t woken up next to you, I would have thought you never slept. You work so tirelessly. You’ve done enough. You’ve done so much that I thought was impossible, and you ask for nothing in return. Don’t be so unkind to yourself.” He cleared his throat. “After all, that’s my betrothed you’re speaking of, and I’ll hear no such inflammatory talk. I’ll have you executed for treason.”

The laugh that boiled out of her sounded stretched thin, aching but genuine and bright. “I really have done the impossible,” she said tearfully, “if you’ll still have me as your wife.”

“You could have run me through just then and I’d still have wanted to marry you,” he admitted. She laughed once more, and he raked his fingers back up along her skin, through her hair, then down again, firm and hard in the way he kneaded at the tense muscles in her back. “I know it must seem, at times, that you’re facing this alone. So much depends on you. You’re an icon to Ferelden, a beacon of hope and strength and a testament to what the Grey Wardens have always stood for: war, victory, peace, vigilance, death, sacrifice. I can’t imagine what it must be like, to know that an entire country leaves the lives of all its people in your hands, but you’re not alone in this. You don’t _have_ to be. I’m right here, I always have been. You can only do so much, and take so much responsibility for what’s out of our control. Don’t be so selfless. Let me worry about you. Let me carry some of that burden.” He bent down to kiss at the strong swath of her back, between her shoulder blades. “If you give too much of yourself away, you won’t have anything left of you but the Warden. That’s all you’ll ever be: this . . . idea, this legend that walks through fire, unburnt, and slaughters hordes of darkspawn all on her own and saves everyone, no matter what. Someone who never eats, or sleeps, who never needs to rest, or to mourn, or to kiss her husband.”

The Warden’s breathing had calmed, steady and strong, but she kept her head ducked low, almost bowing. “I’m not entirely selfless.” Her hand had balled up into a fist against his thigh, and he sat back to look down at her dark hair. “After all I’ve put you through, I can’t claim that. How could you possibly forgive me for your bloodline, and,” she hesitated, and then said, fervidly, “your child?”

He closed his eyes, breathing in deep through his nose and holding it. He’d grown up fatherless and mostly unwanted, and it hurt to know he had purposefully subjected another child to that same fate; alone, with a bitch like Morrigan, who he wasn’t sure was capable of feeling anything even remotely maternal. If Morrigan’s childhood stories were any indicator, he’d inflicted a lifetime of being manipulated and used onto a child that deserved only love, unconditionally. He wasn’t entirely selfless either; he knew what it could have meant, but he’d done it anyways, because he couldn’t lose the Warden. Morrigan couldn’t possibly understand the depth of that kind of devotion, the endless well of love for something that was greater than the combined sum of all his different parts; an adoration so big that sometimes he felt like it was spilling out of him.

No. That wasn’t entirely true. He’d seen Morrigan look at the Warden, the secret little grins they’d exchange, their laughter, the way Morrigan wouldn’t cringe away or sneer when the Warden touched her, the bright and happy look in her eyes as she rolled them when the Warden presented her with another fine piece of jewelry she’d ripped off a body. At one point, the Warden had said Morrigan was like a sister to her ─ perhaps Morrigan knew more of love than he gave her credit for. Maybe she could learn to love a child, the way a mother would.

Yet he still worried. 

Despondently, he leaned down again, covering the Warden with his own body and holding her fast to him. “I can’t forgive you for that, because _I_ made that choice,” he said thickly. “And I’d make it again. A hundred times, if I had to. I just hope she doesn’t use it against Ferelden, one day. We’ll deal with it if it comes.” Her arm had worked its way under his own, and she held onto the back of his shoulder. “As for being king, well, I’m not thrilled, no. It’s a daunting task. I imagine it’ll be much more bearable with you there with me, however, so I can’t say I’m really shedding any tears over it. I get to marry the woman I love. I’d say that’s not a terrible trade, right?” He pulled back again, rubbing his hand up along her spine as he went. “It’s just different, that’s all it is. Grey Warden, king, whore at brothel: it’s all about the service, and how enthusiastically you perform it. And I’ve been told I’m a very enthusiastic performer.”

When laughter came this time, it was bubbled out of her rather than ripped, and the sound was brighter than any magic burst, more divine than anything in the Chant of Light, and it delighted Alistair to no end. He wanted that sound, all the time, for the rest of his life. The Warden lifted up, and while her face was dry now, he could see the redness of her eyes; she looked so young, and he cupped her face in his heartache. “I love you,” she said, hoarsely, and he leaned down and pressed a warm kiss to her forehead. “And if you were a whore, you’d be a very expensive one, and I’d ruin my house and name if it meant affording you.”

He quirked a grin at her. “Flirt. Come here.” He helped her to her feet, spreading his thighs so she could fit between them, and he eased the lacing of her doublet open. He left it pooled on the floor once unfastened, unconcerned with putting things away in their proper place when, in the morning, they would march for Denerim. Slow, he drew her forward by the hem of her breeches, kissing tenderly at her belly with no further intent, and she weaved her fingers through his short hair in affectionate sweeps. Her trousers were next, and she stepped out of them with a hand on his shoulder to balance herself; once she was naked, he was next, and the process was quick and chaste and mutual.

They settled in on the bed together, facing each other, clothes left in a heap on the floor. Alistair drew his hand up and down the dip of her waist, unhurried, just so he could commit the feeling of her bare skin against his palm to memory. She seemed to have the same idea; her eyes were intense on his face, lingering on certain spots for so long that he was certain he could slide her a piece of paper and she could thoroughly map out where each freckle lay on his cheeks.

She edged closer, close enough that her legs tangled with his, and her breath was warm as it ghosted over his face. “I chose you as my champion,” she said, quiet, “because I hoped it would give you closure. For Duncan.”

He ran the pads of his fingers along her waist, watching the motion leave goosebumps along her skin as he moved up, past her belly, her ribs, gentle and feather light on her shoulder, and then back down again. “I know.”

She seemed like she wanted to say more, but she wasn’t sure how. He watched her suck her bottom lip into her mouth, worrying on it with her teeth, before she released. “I did and I didn’t mean for it,” she settled on. “I wanted it to happen the way it did, but I believed in it. I believed it was right ─ that you were right. It had to be you. It just so happened that what I thought was the right thing coincided with what I wanted, too.” She breathed in. “But I can recuse myself, Alistair. I don’t have to rule beside you. I can be an advisor, or a friend, or nothing more. I can go to Weisshaupt. I chose you because I believed in you, and I still do. You could do it without me. I know that.”

He studied her face. “Then why declare your intent to rule with me?”

Her eyes were blue and warm and steady. “Because I wanted to marry you. Because I _want_ to marry you.” One of her hands slipped onto his chest, then drove further up onto his throat, his cheek, her fingers calloused and insistent against his mouth. “Do you remember the first night we spent together?”

“Of course,” he said over her fingers, moving his own hand from her waist to hold her by the palm. “How could I ever forget? You were the first woman I’ve ever spent the night with, and if I have my way, you’ll be the last.”

The Warden’s smile was indulgent. “You told me that you didn’t want to wait. You wanted to have a night with me, on _that_ particular night, in case . . .” She trailed off, the same way he’d had when he’d first propositioned her. He felt his throat close up by a fraction, but he let her continue. “I felt the same, and I still do. I don’t know if Morrigan’s ritual will work,” she said, “and I don’t know if it will matter, anyways. Taint, no taint; it’s still a high dragon. A high dragon with an army.” She set their hands down between them, no longer tracing the shape of his mouth, instead lacing her fingers with his. “But if I were to die,” she urged, voice barely above a whisper, “I would want to die your bride.”

Alistair tried to speak, but all the words withered low in his throat, and he could only wrap an arm around her and haul her closer, until they were pinned together head to toe. Her hair was soft in his hand as he held her head to his shoulder, and she managed to squeeze her arm out from between them to throw over his waist, pressing down on the small of his naked back to keep him near. He wanted to tell her not to say that, to tell her that no one was dying, but he couldn’t promise such a thing. So in lieu of that, he pressed his mouth to the crown of her head and blinked, quick, several times in a row, until he felt composed enough to answer. “Whatever happens,” he finally scraped out, raw, “I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you always.” He cleared his throat and, a little more true to character, he playfully insisted, “If anyone is guaranteed to die tomorrow, Maker help her, it’s Morrigan if this ritual doesn’t work. I will behead her, I’m not joking.” The Warden’s shoulders shook from beneath his arm, her laughter huffed out against his neck, quiet.

“So I take it I was better in bed after all?” she said, but this time the taunt wasn’t loaded; it was light, and easy.

“Much,” he agreed. “I find myself worrying far less that you’ll stab me, during. That woman scares me.”

She pulled back, and she was grinning, but there was admittedly something tight to the curve of it over her mouth. Her hand was warm on his cheek, and she rubbed her thumb along the arch of his cheekbone, along the soft skin under his eye; when he blinked, he could feel her hand against his lashes. “I’m sorry,” she echoed. “And so grateful, all the same. I wish . . .” Her voice faded out. “I wish you hadn’t needed to,” was the lame finish.

He found himself smirking back nonetheless. “Why, are you jealous?” he cooed. “Even just a little?” The hesitation he could read on her face made him click his tongue. “Now, now. If there’s one thing we’ve covered tonight, it’s that we ought to be honest, shouldn’t we? Don’t tell me the right answer. Tell me the real one.”

“I don’t know if jealous is the right word,” she admitted, reluctantly, and she paused to gauge his reaction. He cocked a brow, a sign to continue. She cleared her throat. “I’m not concerned that what happened was . . . anything more than a chore, for either of you. But no. I don’t like the idea that she’s touched you.”

“Possessive then,” he clarified, and his grin must have been satisfied and smarmy, because she laughed and pressed her palm firm into his face, muffling his smile against the bedding beneath them.

“Don’t be smug,” she scolded, but there was no real heat behind her words, and when she let him up, her cheeks were dimpled. They beamed at each other for a few breaths, but he watched hers slowly dim from her face, and then she said, “I’m serious. I’m sorry, Alistair. I know that it . . . must have been unpleasant. I wish I could have done something in your stead.”

Alistair hummed. “Now, don’t think I’m a lecher, but there _are_ worse things I can think of than you with another woman. As long as I get to be in the room.” She smacked his chest, and he grinned, wagging his eyebrows. “Perish the thought, my dear,” he told her. “It wasn’t so bad. I don’t normally take this sort of thing lightly, but it wasn’t . . . it didn’t mean anything. It was like sewing a wound shut; you grit your teeth and bear it, and then it’s over. Well, if sewing a wound shut ended with, ah, an afterglow, that is, but you get my point.” He paused, then said, reluctantly, “Do you . . . want to hear about it?”

He watched her throat work as she swallowed, and he could tell she was debating between honesty or propriety. She nodded. He took a moment to consider his own words, sparing the ceiling a glance as he did, and when he felt like he had an idea of how to go about it, he looked back down to her.

“It was quick, believe it or not. I was surprised ─ I thought I’d be there for hours, because I wouldn’t be able to, er ─ well. You know.” She nodded again. “Wasn’t very involved, either. It was more or less like we were just in the same room together while it was happening. She mostly kept to herself, as did I, thank the Maker. I assumed she’d eat me alive.” As he thought back to it, he said, a little surprised even to his own ears, “Actually, it occurs to me that she was rather decorous about it all, and I don’t believe it was on my behalf. She loves you, you know. In ─ whatever strange way she knows how to. I think this was as much for you as it was for her, though I doubt she’d admit it. So, no. No one got stabbed, I didn’t pull her pigtails, she didn’t turn me into a toad. We did talk a little, but it was mostly . . . I’m not even sure how to explain. We weren’t exactly comforting each other, but it was as close to that as Morrigan and I could ever come to be, I suppose.” He looked back to the Warden, a slow smile starting on his face. “All in all, it’s what I think the Chantry Mothers want all their initiates to think sex is like. Very brief and sort of terrifying and full of shame.”

The Warden was tittering as he spoke, an odd bittersweet look to her eyes as she let them wander over his face. “What did you talk about?”

“I told her she wasn’t half bad, all things considered.” She pinched him, and he yelped. “Ow. All right, all right. I told her what I’d told you: that I’d kill her if this didn’t work. She assured me that it would; said she had no reason nor desire to lie, and she does that manipulative little thing she does, all _never you fret, Alistair, ‘tis only a most pleasant errand we must attend to, and it will save the woman you love._ I told her I’d owe her everything if it worked. Shut her right up. Then she said the child would be the debt paid in full, and I’d owe her nothing. So I suppose we came to an agreement, in the end.”

The Warden inclined her head in a nod. “I suppose you did.” When she lifted her face again, she asked, “And was it? _Most pleasant?”_ He drew out a little _ah_ sound, hemming and hawing over answering, and she told him, “You needn’t tell me, if it makes you uncomfortable. I ─ I would just like to think that you weren’t . . .” She shut her mouth with a _click,_ and she swallowed hard to regain her composure. “I’d like to think that it wasn’t violating. For either of you.”

“It wasn’t,” he assured her. “Look, I’m not gonna lie and say it was enjoyable, per se. But we both agreed to it, and I think we were as kind to each other as we could have been.” He mulled it over. “Honestly, this might have been the closest to being on the same side as I’ve ever felt with her.” Lifting a hand, he traced the backs of his fingers down her jaw. “I didn’t like it, but I’m not going to dwell on it. There have been far worse things I’ve lived through.” He lowered the volume of his voice as he ran his hand down her throat. “And without it, I could have very well been faced with the prospect of living through a life without you. I’d do it again, a hundred times if I had to. You know that.” Her eyes were soft and a little damp, but he, perhaps selfishly, wanted to only think of happier things tonight, so he brought the mood back up with, “But you don’t have to worry. I won’t thrash awake at night, haunted by the image of that wicked Morrigan looming over the poor, innocent, sweet Chantry boy that is myself.”

She grinned. “How comforting.” He watched his hand dip low over her collarbone, and then he traveled back up the length of her throat, until he had a hold of her chin. “I wish I could make it up to you.”

He leaned in, pulling her in to meet him halfway. Her mouth was soft and yielding under his, and when he felt her other arm insistently prodding at his side, he lifted himself up onto an elbow and bore down on her. Once she got her arm underneath him, he dropped back to the bed, and she held him tight around his chest, her hands locked behind his back. “You can,” he told her, tilting his head up to kiss at her cheek. “But I have to admit, I might use it against you for a time. What’s that, my dear? You won’t mend my ripped shirt, even though your stitchwork is better than mine? Ahem. I had sex with Morrigan.”

She burst out laughing, brilliant and beautiful, and she buried her face into his chest, shoulders shaking with it. “Reprehensible,” she told him, and he hummed his pleased agreement. She raised her head, and he angled himself back so that he could meet her eyes. “Give me a start,” she said, her cheeks dimpled from her smile, “where can I begin? If I could do anything to show you how much this meant to me, how much _you_ meant to me, what would it be? Where do I start?”

Alistair took the moment to look at her, _really_ look at her; his hand fit itself against her jaw, and he pressed his thumb hard into the vulnerable pulse point along her throat. She was alive, thrumming with it, warm and solid and real, and they loved each other. He thought it’d been impossible for him to feel this way; he never would have dreamed of asking for this, hadn’t let himself hope for it, but she was here nonetheless. His voice came out quieter than he intended it to when he said, softly, “You can start by marrying me.” Her eyelashes fluttered, and the part of her mouth was so sweet in the way it formed a little _o,_ and he couldn’t fight off his own grin as he drank in the sight of her flushed cheeks, the blue of her eyes. “And every time you introduce yourself, you follow up with, _and have you met my husband, Alistair? He’s so very handsome. Really, it should be a crime to look so good! It’s only not because he’s the king, you know, and he can’t very well arrest himself.”_

The Warden broke apart into choked off giggles, a mix of pure delight and wet-sounding heartache, and she wormed her way out from under him so that she could take his face in both of her hands; when she kissed him, it was heated and impassioned, so consuming that he ended up sprawled out on his back from the press of her, and she half-lay on top of him. It was slow, and insistent, but there was no further purpose behind it beyond a simple enjoyment of the intimacy. When she slipped back, she hovered over him, grinning at him wide and shining, and Alistair felt like a man in a Chantry looking up at her likeness, awestruck and reverent and kiss-swollen.

“You have my word,” she told him, and she settled down beside him again, drew him close to her and carded her fingers through his hair. “Now rest, my love. We march in a few hours.”

Alistair cupped her waist in his palm, gladdened that she’d tucked his head under her chin, because he was certain his face must match the abrupt rush of uncertainty in his throat. He held her fast to him, her arm draped over his and her bicep sturdy and warm under his head, and he pressed his face into her collar and focused on the sensation of her nails dragging across his scalp, trying to match his breathing with hers. Part of him wanted to ease back, so that he could spend the last few hours of quiet peace they had mapping out each tiny detail of her face and her body, each strand of hair and the particular spot her cheeks dimpled when she smiled, but he also wanted just this, exactly this, and he would never deny her anything.

Eventually, he could feel himself drifting in and out of sleep, somehow too comfortable and uneasy all at once. Her fingers stayed practiced and constant in their path along his skull, and her breathing never shifted into the deepness of a woman asleep, but she was relaxed and soft around him, and he contented himself with that.

  
  
  
  


(Later, months later, when the archdemon lay dead and the Blight ended, he would approach his wife, proudly watching her introduce herself as the queen of Ferelden to a gaggle of nobles, and he’d ease in beside her to take his rightful place at her side. She’d spare him a look and a dimpled grin, and she’d turn back to the dignitaries before them and continue, “And have you met my husband, Alistair? Isn’t he so very handsome? It should be a crime to look so good! The only reason it’s not is because he’s the king, as you may know, and he can’t very well arrest himself, can he?”

When he’d turned red to the tips of his ears, fumbling through his words in an attempt to explain that his wife was making fun of him, she’d laugh and laugh at him, and the sound would be foolish and joyful and sweet.)

**Author's Note:**

> the nobles: oh my goooddddd stop flirting just shut the fuck up


End file.
